


Four Empty Hearts

by RagChinaDoll



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies), Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: Gen, it may be sad, re-posting/ edited version
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 23:09:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5434286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RagChinaDoll/pseuds/RagChinaDoll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One bullet changed the lives of three people. They could lie to themselves and say it was one of the others who had pulled the trigger and caused his death but what would always remain was that one of them had killed another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Empty Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> This story will most likely end on a sad note. It’s a one shot so I won’t be keeping you all in suspense for weeks.

**\--Four Empty Hearts--**

Most days he spent walking aimlessly. After what had happened, he had found he would be driving himself insane should he stay behind the walls of his latest home. Walking seemed to be the only thing that was keeping Ethan from going insane.

It felt like he had been walking since it had happened. When those emotional eyes closed for the last time he had turned around and walked away with his hands in his hair. He only stopped when he was out of steps and on his knees. Screaming to an empty sky with every ounce of breath in his lungs.

It was the not knowing which one of them was at fault that kept him awake at night. Not knowing which one of them had blood on their hands, who had pulled the trigger that killed another agent.

The mission they were on was simple. A juvenile mission they could have sent a cadet on. An old relic had been stolen from a rich bureaucrat who pulled enough strings to get IMF’s involved. They had been sent to retrieve the relic and return it to the rightful owner and not cause an international incident.

Thinking back now it was too simple. Too easy of a task that something had to gone wrong.

That day it had been raining. Thunder was looming in the sky above them.

He should have known then to turn back. Call an end to the mission before it began. Send another team another day. Not them. But he didn’t.

Instead he had made one of the worst decisions of his life. He parked the car a few feet away from the building they would be entering and got themselves ready to enter.

He was out of the car first and already heading towards the building, Jane was behind him with Brandt and Benji just behind her.

They had gotten a few feet away from the door when the bullet hit the ground by his feet. 

* * *

 Jane didn’t like to show her tears. She had been the same since she was a child. She hadn’t cried at her father’s funeral or her mother’s she had kept her tears for when she was alone. When no one was around to see them descend from her eyes.

 Starring down at the tear stained page, she no longer cared if she was seen.

Over the past two weeks this is all she had been able to bear. All she was able to do was sit in silence waiting for a verdict. She had tried to move on like she had when Hanaway had been killed but she couldn’t.

She would not be able to move on the same way because there was no target she could occupy her mind with. No one else to take the blame but themselves.

This page of photographs was not one of her favourites. It was a bit messy and sloppy in layout, but the photographs were important. But it meant the most to her know.

She had looked at this page many times since the incident. She knew by sight the measurements of the corner to the image, the style of the text including the fraction of height difference in lettering.

Scrapbooking may be considered a wasted past time but it was a calming distraction she had brought with her from childhood. And this book was one of the few she had left. Photographs from childhood, her family, agents she had passed before meeting her boys. And a sacred few of her and Hanaway.

She very nearly lost them all in a fire that consumed her home a year ago. But he had rescued the tattered book from the wreckage and created this new book form the remains.

The cover was whiter than snow, her name was printed on it in rose red lettering, and below that was a hand drawn cartoon of herself. What touched her most was the message on the inside page.

‘Here’s to the good memories, B.’

She had thought the memories lost in the hungry flames of the fire but she hadn’t counted on her friends warming heart.

The photo before her was of her boys. It was taken the day before the incident. Before they ran for cover as bullets rained near their feet. Fired by sheltered shooters. While they ran they returned fire not knowing where to direct their aim.

She thought he was right behind her but he wasn’t. She looked back quickly to see him stumbling back to his feet after a fall, something she would have done herself if she hadn’t turned back around.

She was hiding behind the object that she almost fell over shooting at the figures in the dark as Ethan nearby did the same. Three of them fired their guns at the same time and one of them fell. That was the last bullet to be fired.

* * *

 Brandt swallowed the intoxicating liquor and slammed the empty glass on the table. Grabbing the bottle in front of him he poured more of the burning Scotch into the glass. He repeated this action over and over each night until he found he was able to sleep without the nightmares.

 Normally he would be doing something to occupy his mind, to get concentrated on something other than what haunted his slumber, but recently he found nothing would work to take the images away.

 This repeated notion of drinking a quarter of a bottle of Scotch had become a habit of late. A habit he knew he should break before it broke him.

 The nightmares themselves were only ghosts haunting him with ‘what ifs?’

 What if he had been the one to fall, would he have died instead? What if he had never become part of the team? What if he had done his job and protected people?

 What if he hadn’t of taken more time before taking that stupid shot, would Benji still be alive?

 He was the one to reach the prone body first. At that point he was still alive. He lifted him into his arms, looking over the body for the wound responsible for the blood pooling on the ground beneath them.

 A large hole was in the centre of his chest sucking in the air around it with each ragged breath Benji drew.

 The blood had already seeped into his clothing. There was so much of this life giving source surrounding him. His hands felt like they were gliding though water as they slipped on his friend’s skin in his attempts to stop the bleeding wound.

 Blood began to spill from the corners of Benji’s lips as they opened to speak. Nothing passed them nut a faint whimper.

Benji’s eyes glazed over as they looked desperately into his. Then they slowly closed, slower than time itself seemed to move. The last sight the previously bright and cheerful eyes saw was his friends own bleeding ones. Brandt had been begging Benji to hold on. 

He hadn’t noticed Jane and Ethan walk up behind him. He didn’t notice when Ethan dropped his gun and walked away. He didn’t notice Jane fall to her knees beside him and hold on to Benji’s hand.

All he noticed was his friend. How the blood had formed at the corner of his lips and slipped down his cheek, the blood on his lips and cheek, his eyes closed. The strong grasp he held on his friend was the only thing keeping the body from complete limpness. 

He didn’t know how an ambulance got there, he suspected Ethan called it, or how they managed to take Benji away from Jane’s tight grip on his hand.

He just knew that no matter how hard they tried none of them would be the same again.

* * *

  “Is there no other way of finding out which one of them it was?”

There’s no doubt that one them was the shooter. The angle of the bullet proves that. But the bullet was too mangled to be identified. I’m sorry to say that there is no positive way for us to match the bullet to any of their weapons. We may never know which one of them killed Agent Dunn.”

“Hunt, Carter, and Brandt. Three of the best now have to live not knowing which one of them killed Dunn.”

\--End--

 

**Author's Note:**

> When I first wrote this it was a few years ago. I've changed the wording a little since My style has changed. The original is still posted on FF.net is you feel like spot the difference. I may come back and edit a little more. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. Please review, they help.


End file.
